


Do you see it?

by silenth



Series: Time is what you make of it [1]
Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:26:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26788915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silenth/pseuds/silenth
Summary: Jasper meets Alice in a diner in Philadelphia, 1948. She wears a blue dress and Jasper doesn't know what to do with her. Thankfully, Alice has her own ideas.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Charlotte/Peter (Twilight)
Series: Time is what you make of it [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953487
Comments: 14
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

## A little somethin against the wind

Philadelphia, 1948

Jasper could feel every tepid raindrop hitting his skin as he trudged through a mid-afternoon thunderstorm. He was following a well-dressed businessman he had bumped into five blocks back. The man had nodded at him absently, said, "Sorry, pal," and continued on his way. His scent in Jasper's nostrils, he tracked him from across the street. 

Everything he wore was soaking wet and he was hungry and black-eyed and also miserable, ruminating on whatever this existence was. He remembered telling Maria when she told him they had as much of a right to live as anything else on the earth, "We are _not alive._ We are parasites. We ruin everything we touch." 

"And what made us this way, my love?" He sat on the edge of their makeshift straw bed, and she wrapped her arms around him from the back. Even as she reassured him, he could feel how bored she was with his depression and doubts.

"The devil," he whispered.

"Yes, to be his dark angels on earth. Everything has a purpose." 

Dark angels, phoenixes, blood soldiers - Maria had a lot of pretty words, but in the end he was right - they were only parasites.They could only destroy and he had destroyed more than almost anyone else he knew. 

The man turned left onto a busier street, his feelings reflecting a rising anticipation. He must be nearing his destination-- finally, Jasper thought. He could feed and get this over with. At least he had found a man this time. He hated killing women, feeling their intense paradoxical emotions when they saw him - their animal brain knew enough to find him repulsive but his grace and beauty stoked their curiosity, interest, lust. Part of them always wanted to run, but another voice would say, why, he looks like such a nice man, such an angelic face.... 

"These are the tools Satan has bestowed upon us," Maria told him. "The proof that this is our only destiny. There could be nothing but this."

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't feel their emotions as he killed them. The terror, the stabbing pain, the desperation. When Maria played with them, he would hear their screams for their husbands, their wives, their mothers and fathers. Their children.

And when the hunger subsided, he would be left with their staring eyes and drawn, pale faces, broken bodies to be dumped in rivers or woods or left in alleyways. He robbed the ones in the city in case he needed money for a hotel room to get out of the sunlight. Just another sin to add to his tally, another lash upon his open and bleeding conscience.

Once, in another life, Jasper had won a prize for memorizing more scriptures than any other child at his Baptist church. He was raised to be a good Southern gentleman: respectful, honest, straightforward. He wanted to blame Maria for taking everything from him, but maybe she couldn't help it anymore than he could now. At least she had people around her, for all she treated him like shit and lied to him every day. It was horrible to be alone. He envied Peter and Charlotte so much he couldn't stand to be around them.

There had been something, a random feeling in the dead of night on the road, that told him moving toward Philadelphia had been the right choice, that maybe something new waited for him there. He had been here for two weeks and had seen no sign of anything other than the devastation he wreaked everywhere he went.

The man turned right, walked into a diner and Jasper cursed. He should give up, find another well-dressed man walking down the street, but the rain had moved south and the clouds were thinning. Maybe the diner would be mostly empty. In any case, he had to get off the streets before the sun made an appearance.

He darted across the street and pushed the door to the diner open. He reached up and grabbed the bell that hung above the door before it could ring. He moved so fast the man was just approaching a woman, enfolding her in his arms. He could feel their love beating like hummingbird wings against his throat. Then, he smelled a vampire.

It wasn't one he recognized; her scent was completely foreign. His body tensed and his black eyes darted around the restaurant. On one of the stools at the counter sat... what? A child? Not an immortal child - that was the one thing Maria had warned him they could never, never create. "No one under eleven or twelve years, Jasper."

Then she turned and looked directly into his eyes. The joy he thought was from the young couple was coming off her as well. Joy, nerves, anticipation. Her eyes were a murkier reddish gold color, like a sunset reflected on a pond, her hair was dark and as short as a man, shorter than his. She was smiling at him and walking with graceful, bouncing steps as she approached him.

She was... perfection. Small and slight and glowing - not from the effect of the sunlight on her skin but from some kind of inner light.

"You certainly kept me waiting long enough." Even her voice was sweet and beguiling. He wondered if she had some kind of special power like his - maybe the ability to enchant. But he didn't feel anything deceptive coming off of her. His mind appeared to be totally his own.

He ducked his head, his eyes running down her figure again and then back up to her face. "I'm sorry, ma'am."

She smiled again, her anxiety disappearing as a strange sense of relief and... knowing? Some kind of knowing overtook her. She reached out her hand. "Jasper." His hand swallowed hers up, but her skin was so soft and her bones so smooth inside his. "I'm Alice. Come on," she tugged at him gently.

There was a line of ants crawling across the wall in the booth at the back of the restaurant. "It'll be dark soon. We can go back to your room." He could only imagine what his face looked like but she just smiled at his confusion. "It's nicer than mine."

"Did someone tell you about me?" he asked, wondering if she was a friend of Peter and Charlotte's. He couldn't imagine a creature like this being an acquaintance of Maria's, much less someone she would confide in about him.

The waitress walked by with a pot of coffee, smelling of roses and smoke. His hunger flared up and she reached out across the table and took his hand again. "Don't worry, Jasper. I paid them to leave us alone."

He stared at their hands. There was something happening inside him from the feel of her skin on his. He didn't know what to call it. There was something in her face he still couldn't place. "You said you were waiting for me."

"Yes." She kept her skin pressed to his and he felt her nerves spike up again, the hair rising on the back of his neck. "It's hard to explain. I woke up like this. In 1920. I don't remember who I was before. I don't know who..."

"Turned you?"

She shook her head. "I didn't know anything. I was so confused and... hungry. I..." The waitress walked by again. Alice was speaking so low that her lips were barely moving but he felt her years-old desperation like a spike in his skull. He found his thumb instinctively rubbing circles on the back of her hand and felt the tiny whorls and ridges of her fingertips twitching softly against his wrist.

"Then one day I was down by the Mississippi River and I went-- somewhere else. I could hear you by the same river in Minnesota. It was twilight and you were wearing short sleeves in the snow." He remembered something like that. Hunting was usually good down by the river and it was the easiest way to get rid of people, after.

"That was how I knew I wasn't alone. I've seen you so many times, Jasper. I've been waiting and waiting for you." She straightened up a little, adjusted the neckline of her dress. "Do you like my dress?" She offered him a hopeful, nervous smile that tore something open inside him. She had on a little necklace, cheap metal flowers painted blue and white crystal stars joined with impossibly small gold links and he had the idea she had put it on for him. Bluebonnets used to be his favorite flowers. They grew wild on the lane where his family had lived. Her dress was blue too, not dark blue or light blue but right in the middle.

"Yes, it's real pretty. Alice," he looked at her even though he wanted to turn his eyes from her, from whatever that feeling was he still couldn't name, and her beauty, and that ribbon tied around her head. "I'm not sure what you want from me. I don't know why you would be having these visions of me -- why you've been waiting for me."

She turned his hand back over, palm up. Her whole hand fit inside his palm, and she stroked her fingers over his skin. "Why do you think? Do you see it?" She captured his eyes with her stare and he felt his lips curve a little. Just because it felt so good to be touched like this, with some true affection. Just because she was different from everyone else he had ever met. That was all.

His eyes dropped back to her neck. The ends of her hair were curly, they brushed against her earlobes. Unbidden, he was struck with the desire to hold her against the wall, kiss the spots where her hair touched her skin.

When he looked back at her face, her eyes were unfocused, the pupils so wide that her irises had disappeared. He watched her come back into herself. Her eyes went to his mouth. "That would be nice."

He swore he would have blushed if he could have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 title comes from a Bob Seger song. 
> 
> I was working in a bookstore when the Twilight books first came out and I never had any desire to read them. My first introduction was watching Breaking Dawn: Part 2 in the theater as a joke with my friends. 
> 
> Then Corona happened and fucked up my life and the world in general. I saw the movies were available for streaming and I decided I was going to become obsessed with Twilight until Corona ends. And here we are, eight months later. True story.
> 
> I still haven't read all the books but I have tried to avoid any glaring errors or OOC moments. I am going to play with AU elements later on in the series (assuming I don't wimp out and stop posting) so it'll happen eventually, intentionally or not.
> 
> Writing this has made me so happy in what is a dark and uncertain time. I hope you enjoy reading it.


	2. Something wild and unruly

His room is much nicer than hers, and neater. Alice doesn't own enough clothes to her estimation ( _Does anyone?_ she often wondered) but she had so many that it was hard to keep them organized and they ended up strewn across her night table and bed, hanging over her lamp. But her room had peeling wallpaper, dirty windows, and a minor roach infestation, and at least her clothes gave it a bright, friendly appearance. She had spent two weeks planning what she would wear to meet Jasper, but she could tell from the way he stared at her that it had been worth it. 

Blue, she nodded to herself as she walked around the room, picking up his few possessions-- some books, maps, two other pairs of shoes, both nearly worn through but clean-- and placing them back down. Blue is our color, she thought whimsically.

He was leaning against the wall, watching her. She smiled at him and he immediately smiled back before his lips flattened out again. He's been lonelier than I am, she thought sadly. At least I had him and the Cullens - at least I knew what was coming. My poor darling. 

"Are there any questions you want to ask me? About our future?"

He raised his eyebrows. " _Our_ future? Do you want to travel with me?"

"Of course." 

He looked out the window, folding his arms tighter against his chest. The shadows under his eyes are as dark as any she had ever seen. It's been a long time since he's fed. He was planning to kill the man in the diner but Alice had seen that his wife was going to tell him today she was pregnant, so she had insisted they go straight back to the hotel. 

The room fell away and she went frigid all over and she had a vision of him telling her she could do better than him. Him stealing away in the middle of the night with his single suitcase, sure that he would only be a burden to someone as sweet and innocent as her and she's alone, again, she will be alone forever, there will never be someone else like Jasper, she has failed--

She came back and found herself sitting on the bed as he stared at her, his brow furrowed and his dark eyes clouded with the sadness he felt because of her. He came to sit beside her and took her hands in his, rubbing them between his scarred palms. "A vision?"

She felt her face crumpling, shoulders quaking with the tears that could never come. She nodded. 

"Not a happy one?" he asked gently.

She bit down on her fingers and rocked herself for comfort, nodding again. How could someone as good as Jasper be so convinced that he was beyond saving? And how could she convince him that he _belonged_ to her? 

"Alice," he murmured, soothingly, "whatever it is, it will be fine." She shook her head now and hid her face in her hands and he slowly reached out and put his arm around her. "I'm sorry. Darlin', I'm sorry."

She leaned against his shoulder for a long moment and he didn't move away. Finally she sighed deeply and sat up. "I haven't done a very good job explaining this to you, I'm afraid." He started to speak but she shook her head. "I wish I could show you what I've seen - how often I've seen us together. I'm going to make you so _happy_ , Jasper. Don't you see it?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?" He leaned back and stared at her, his brow furrowed in confusion. "You know I can't see what you see."

She searched his eyes and saw the tiny flaring flame of hope, the soft warmth that he hadn't yet realized was love. "But you can. If you let yourself." She looked away, wrung her hands together. "I know you need to go hunt. You must be starving, but would you do something for me first?"

"All right. Do you want me to bring someone back for you?"

"No, not that." She had been staring at the bed, remembering the vision she had years ago of the two of them lying on a comforter much like this one. It's now or never, Alice, she told herself firmly and squared her shoulders. "Could we-- just lie here together? For a few minutes?"

He stared at her for a long moment, wordlessly, and then he moved around to the other side of the bed and sat down. His movements had lost their typical brutal grace and were jerky and uncertain. She smiled a little - at least she wasn't the only one who was nervous.

She stretched out on the bed and once she was positioned, he laid down a good foot from her, at the far edge of the mattress. "Aren't you going to hold me?" she breathed with a soft little chuckle.

He reached out and placed his hand on the slight curve of her hip. His chest spasmed like he was trying to breathe. 

"Closer?"

He pulled her a few inches closer. She bit her lip and fought the desire to crawl on top of him. "Jasper, closer," she whispered, letting all those long lonely years of wanting pulse through her and watching her desires inflame his own. _"Please?"_ It was the please that did it. He pulled her fully against his body, one arm laid flat on the pillow so she could rest her head on it. His other arm curled over her shoulders, his hand cupping her neck and the back of her head. 

"I haven't held someone like this in a long time. I'm sorry if I'm out of practice."

She watched him from under her eyelashes. He had his gaze focused over the top of her head now, but he was holding her awfully tight. "Well, I haven't been with someone like this in _ever_ , so..." His gaze flew to her face and his mouth dropped open in shock, even as he was lying down.

"Even when you were a newborn?" he asked, astonished, and then shut his mouth. She smiled; she knew he was a Southern gentleman through and through. He was proper and modest and would always treat her like a lady - at least in public. It was adorable and also so sexy it drove her crazy.

"Well, I told you I can't remember being human, but since then, no. As soon as I saw you, I knew I had to wait for you, Jasper. You're the only one for me." He gave her a look of utter astonishment and wonder and a little bit of fear and she smiled as she nuzzled her face against his neck and inhaled deeply. He shuddered as her lips parted against his skin. "This is what you wanted to do," she whispered as she kissed his neck, the spots where the ends of his honey-colored hair hit his pale skin. She could pick out the scars on his patchwork skin, wanted to trace them with her tongue. 

"Alice, why do you want-- if you've seen what I've done, why do you want to be with someone like me?" His fingers traced the seams of her skull over and over, like he couldn't bear to stop touching her. 

"Because this is how it's supposed to be." Their breathing had synchronized. All she could smell was his damp shirt and the fresh hay smell of his venom. Her world narrowed down to this person on this bed at this time. No other time, no other possible world in all the kaleidoscope of worlds that spun through her mind, only this one.

Finally, she thought as he pulled back his head and rubbed his thumb over her mouth. She pursed her mouth in a kiss and his face changed as he looked at her lips. He moved forward and kissed her, long and sweet and desperate. She felt like it lasted forever, like this was the reason they didn't need to breathe, so they could exist mouth to mouth, moving and tasting, her leg flung over his chest, his hand moving up and down her body, her head, her neck, her back, her ass, her thighs. She felt the joy surging inside her like a geyser and wanted to laugh and squeal and kiss him and jump up and down on top of him and take her clothes off, all at once.

When he finally pulled away, she gestured to her face. She pushed all the love she had felt for him, all the years she had spent thinking of him, into her eyes and stared hard into his beautiful face. He was so still against her, his hair falling gently over his forehead and his eyes going even blacker, melting as they caressed her face. "Jasper. Do you see it?"

He nodded so subtly no one else would have seen it. The smile that broke across his face was the smile of a condemned man seeing the gates of the jail swing open. She leaned forward and rubbed her lips against his, not exactly kissing, just feeling his love against her skin. Finally. Finally. She must have said it because he laughed out loud, a sharp, rusted sound, like he hadn't done it in a very long time. 

"Yes, Alice. I see it now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 comes from The Chicks song (songwriters: Martie Maguire and Marcus Hummon), which I picked at random but was strangely appropriate ("closer to heaven above and closer to you").


	3. Like the dawn through the night

Jasper lifted his head from the twisted body of the last coyote, wiped the blood from his mouth with the bank of his hand, and grimaced. Alice stood nearby, a dead deer at her feet, and eyed herself in a compact as she cleaned the blood off her face with a handkerchief. 

It was day after he met her and he marveled at how much his life had changed already. They spent the whole first night talking and, yes, kissing, though he wouldn't do any more to her than that. Stories of her visions poured out of her - the idea of "vegetarianism," a coven like a family that would take them in and educate them. Sisters and brothers, a mother and father - he had left all that behind long ago, with the Whitlocks of Houston, Texas, most of them dead and rotted in the ground - but he couldn't miss the naked longing in her eyes. He saw it, too, when she looked at him and it terrified him and thrilled him in equal measure. 

Even if he wasn't sure about a family, the idea of vegetarian vampires interested him tremendously. Being set free from the burden of killing humans to exist seemed like the answer to a prayer. He hadn't realized, however, that the answer would be this... revolting.

"I know it's disgusting at first," Alice told him as he tried not to gag over the feral, musky taste of animal-blood flooding his senses. "But it gets easier as you go along." She walked over and brushed her hand over the back of his neck. When he turned to look down at her, she was holding up a small flask. He looked at her in surprise, then sniffed at the opening-- fresh water. 

"You should rinse out your mouth," she advised. "It makes it easier to do it again if you don't have to walk around with that taste in your mouth all day."

He nodded, rinsed and spit into the dirt. 

"Have you been living this way a long time?" he asked, feeling like a disgusting savage beside her. He tipped the flask and splashed a bit of water on his hands, trying to wipe the clumps of fur and animal blood from his skin. 

She watched him with a sweet smile, flicking the skirt of her dress back and forth as she stood still. "I've tried to do it on and off for years. I haven't quite perfected it yet, I'm afraid. I didn't get anything on my dress, did I? It's new." She balanced on one toe and then spun in a circle, a perfect ballerina, and he let his eyes journey over her. He didn't know if the dress was beautiful on its own but she looked lovely in it. It was something she proudly called _Dior_ , which as far as he could figure meant it was big and pleated. 

"Just here." He bent to the ground and brushed his hand over the bottom of her hem. "I think something caught your hem, but it's not bad. You could mend it." His hand brushed the back of her knee and she startled. He instantly leapt back to his feet. "Sorry," he muttered. 

"No, it was--" She bit down on her bottom lip. "Fine."

"How do you get the money for your clothes?" he asked abruptly, trying like hell to drag his mind away from the thoughts of her delicate kneecap, small and perfectly formed as a seashell under her flawless skin. Not to mention the black silk stockings she was wearing. Not to mention how her skirt hit her right below the knee. ("It's French!" she exclaimed when she emerged from the bathroom in his hotel room that morning and spun around. "It's the latest thing!")

"I bet," she confided, caught between abashed and proud. "On horse races, dog races, pool games. I don't win all the time, but I do quite well and I spend most of it on clothes. Boxing matches are the easiest for some reason, but they never want to admit me. I always have to sneak in. Of course, all the blood presents a problem at those. I won over a thousand dollars a few weeks ago but then I slipped afterwards." 

Jasper was grinning in astonishment, shaking his head at what men must have thought when this little-slip-of-an-Alice pushed her way to the counter of a betting parlor to place a bet on a boxing match. 

"But it will all be so much easier, now that we're together," she continued and the smile faded from his face. She watched him a moment longer, then turned her gaze up to the sky. There were buzzards circling low, drawn by the carnage from their feeding. The clouds were low, too, gray edging toward black, and the wind had picked up. "It's coming on to rain soon. It will storm hard for a couple hours. If we travel South along the road, there's an old abandoned farmhouse we can stay in. So my dress won't get wet.. You don't mind, do you? Like I said, it's new." She flicked the skirt of her dress back and forth again and his gaze snapped from her face to her hands. He twisted his head away, looking around for their suitcases. 

"Of course not, we can stay there until the rain stops. An hour, you said?" 

"Thereabouts," she sighed as she watched him pick up his suitcase and her valise under one arm, then scoop her trunk up with his other arm and fling it over his shoulder. "Jasper, I can carry something! I'm stronger than I look, you know." 

She had made this same argument when they left the hotel that morning, and like then, he gave her a bland look and said, "It has nothing to do with strength." And like then, she rolled her eyes and then jumped up to kiss him lightly before he could turn away. This was the very least he could do for her, he figured. He wouldn't let those porcelain doll hands of hers carry another bag while he was around. 

"If you must, then it's this way." Alice spun around and began leading him out of the woods. They had made plans the night before to travel North. She had a feeling the Cullens might be in Canada. 

Jasper watched the slight curves of her hips swaying under her floral-print dress and fought back a smile as he followed behind her. There was a belt around her waist that was so ridiculously small he thought he could have worn it on his wrist. She was so tiny, so lady-like, but she objected to his attempts to treat her like a delicate princess. She insisted on hunting with him and killed one of the coyotes when it approached him from behind as he drank from another. "I got your back," she had called cheerfully when he whirled around. She broke the animal's neck and then tossed it over to him and examined the polish on her fingernails. And now she sped through the woods faster than a deer could run, her shiny silver heels flashing as the grass settled behind her with barely a rustle.

They reached the shelter of the farmhouse as the rain started and he placed their suitcases and her trunk in the empty room that lay inside the back door. "Doesn't smell too musty," she declared after taking a deep breath. "So that's good." He pulled a towel out of his suitcase and placed it on the worn floorboards, then retreated to stand against the wall, his hands shoved in his pockets. She sat down on it, stretching her legs out in front of her and patted the floor beside her in invitation. "Here, don't hover over me all afternoon."

Of course, as soon as he sat down, she inched right over next to him and captured his hand in hers. She stared hard at him for a moment, her eyes moving over his face like she was conducting a geological study of the planes of his cheekbones and forehead. 

He quirked his brow. "Do I have blood on me?" he asked. She shook her head absently and smiled.

"Your eyes are less red already," she said. "See, the longer I live off animals," she opened her eyes wider, "the more golden my eyes get. I slipped at that boxing match a few weeks ago, but look how faded the red is now?" She leaned closer, tilted her face up to his. 

She smelled like lemons, of all things. He had never met another vampire whose venom had that smell, and when he had kissed her last night, her flavor had exploded inside his mouth, flooding through him: somehow sour enough to make his tongue pucker and sweet enough to make his teeth ache all at once, thick and delicious enough to coat his senses. He had tasted her on the back of his teeth all morning, until that first disgusting gulp of coyote blood washed her away. 

And now he could smell her again, intoxicating and fresh, her face only a few inches away from his as he bent down to examine her golden eyes, pupils ringed with fading crimson. His skin ached with wanting and he felt so unsteady he was afraid he would fall into her and drown. 

She had the most perfect mouth, like a budded flower on the cusp of blossoming, her upper lip deeply indented. Her lips were the shade of ripening cherries, she must have had olive skin as a human to match her dark hair. 

She tilted her head and he realized he was staring, but couldn't quite make himself look away. "My eyes will be all golden soon," she told him, her voice taking on that beguiling certainty that came, he already learned, when she spoke of something she had seen. "And yours will be like that too."

He looked away at that. "I am going to try, Alice, but--"

"Jasper," she whispered. She wrapped her hand around his elbow- well, as far around as it could go. Her fingers didn't even meet all the way. "It's going to be more difficult for you than the rest because of how you've lived for so long, but I know how strong you are. The longer you can do it, the easier it will become." 

He had hung his head when she referenced how he had lived - the years he had spent with Maria were a shame branded onto his skin in all his newborn scars, the endless waste and death he had helped perpetuate for nothing but Maria's greed. 

"I'm not going to abandon you, no matter what happens. So don't worry." She got up on her knees and placed her head on his shoulder and he didn't breathe for long moments because it had only been one day and she was already so much a part of him. She was stitching up his cuts one word at a time, binding his wounds with her faith and her kindness. 

He looked at her face, how open she was to him, and shook his head. "How can you be real? Do you know how long I've been alive, and I've never seen or heard of anyone like you."

"Don't place me on too high a pedestal," she whispered, running her hand through his hair. The rain slapped at the roof, sluiced down the windows. He felt like the storm was inside him when he looked at her. He had never been drawn to someone in either of his lives like he had to her, but to inflict his desires on someone as perfect and innocent as Alice seemed wrong. 

"You make me as happy as I make you," she told him, seeing his doubts in the way he was afraid to touch her. "You just don't know it yet." She was watching him now with light shining in her eyes and a smile he couldn't quite place...

"Why are you smiling at me so smugly, might I ask?" Jasper slipped his finger under her chin, raised her mouth a little more. My god, that _mouth_. What had God been thinking when he created it? 

"You're going to kiss me again, like you did in the hotel," she said, her smile spreading to a grin. She hesitated a second when he paused. "Aren't you?"

"I think I have to," he lowered his head until his lips were a whisper above hers. "Your mouth is enough to drive a saint to distraction," he muttered and she let out a surprised laugh before his lips descended on hers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christian Dior debuted his New Look collection in February 1947. My idea for Alice's dress was inspired by the first image in this slide show: https://www.dw.com/en/the-new-look-how-christian-dior-revolutionized-fashion-70-years-ago/a-37491236
> 
> I just love the idea of Alice dressing in her French couture to go hunting with Jasper for the first time. She is the best combination of bad ass and girly-girl.
> 
> Chapter title comes from a ballad from THE GOD OF SONG Michael Bolton (songwriters: Michael Bolton and Mutt Lange).


	4. Love is a banquet on which we feed

"You're going to kiss me again, like you did in the hotel," Alice said, her smile spreading to a grin. She hesitated a second when Jasper paused. "Aren't you?"

"I think I have to," he lowered his head until his lips were a whisper above hers. "Your mouth is enough to drive a saint to distraction," he muttered and she let out a surprised laugh before his lips descended on hers. 

Her hands scraped down his back, fisted in his clothes. His hands spiked her hair with their urgent, impatient motions. She yanked his shirt away from his waistband and slid her hand against his stomach and suddenly he wrenched himself away, groaning. They were still kneeling on the floor, his body bent into hers, but he felt like he had run fifty miles. His legs were shaky as he forced himself to his feet. 

He threw a window open and leaned as far out as he could balance. Rain pounded his face and soaked his body as he made himself stop breathing, stop smelling her. He tried to think about Christ or hellfire or both, anything to calm himself. 

"I didn't see this," came her quiet voice from behind his back. "You're getting wet and dirty, Jasper. Why are we stopping?"

"Alice, I'm trying to be a gentleman! I don't want to hurt you."

For some reason, she found that hilarious. The empty room rang with the silvery purr of her laughter and she leaned to put her head out the window as well. "I suppose we'll both have to get wet after all." She stuck her body out the window next to his, pressed herself close because he didn't have enough room to move away. 

"Alice," he groaned. His mouth flooded with rainwater, but he could still taste her, like she was soaked into his cells. She slid her small wet hands against his stomach again and even though he was so hard already it seemed impossible, somehow he went even harder. 

He straightened and pulled her back inside. He reached out to grasp her shoulders and push her away but somehow she twisted them up and got herself locked against him. Her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. Her dripping face pressed up close to his. He still wasn't breathing and he closed his eyes because how could he not touch her when she was this close, when she was this perfect, but at the same time, how _could_ he? He was so undone by her, her scent, her taste, her closeness, the fine-grained texture of her immaculate skin, that he couldn't even feel her emotions anymore. Lust was a wall of fire inside him and he feared he was, without meaning to, projecting his desires onto her. Surely someone as innocent as Alice should be more cautious, should find him frightening or at least disturbing. 

But Alice didn't object to anything, not even the way he was cradling her bottom now, one hand pressing into the soft flesh of her thighs as he held her up against him. For some reason he couldn't begin to fathom, she seemed to find him as pleasurable to look at as he found her. He could feel the heat from her eyes as they moved over his face to his chest. He looked down and saw the deeper scars than ran across his torso emerging from where his shirt buttons had come undone. 

"Damn," he muttered and went to button them. She grabbed his hand, captured it in both of hers. "Alice," he said, baffled, "What--"

"You're awful blockheaded sometimes, Jasper," she sighed. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her body, well, on her chest, and he curled his fingers against her-- goddamn, he was a brute, but he couldn't _not_ do it, it was what her body was made for, to be adored and he was only a humble supplicant-- and she arched against his touch, closed her eyes. After a long moment, he slowly pulled his hand away. 

"Don't--" she moaned and he studied her face for a long moment before he smiled, recognizing the want gone to need in her eyes. 

"You want me," he whispered in awe, a smile finally curving his lips.

"Jasper! What do you think you've been feeling this whole time?" she asked, exasperated. She bent down and bit the scar on his chest she had been staring at. 

"I thought - I thought I felt so much for you, I _wanted_ you so much," he gasped for breath as she moaned against his skin, "I'm overwhelming you, I--"

She held his scarred skin gently between her teeth and laved it with her tongue and he shuddered, lowering them both to the ground, clinging to her when she refused to let go. "Are they more sensitive? Your scars?" she whispered, when she finally released his flesh from her mouth. 

"Yes," he muttered. 

"Did I hurt you?" She caught his eyes again, smug and certain. He shook his head and she smiled like Eve must have smiled at the beginning of time. 

"I don't think you were overwhelming me, Jasper. I think I want you so much, I was overwhelming _you_." His eyes flew back to her, wide and uncertain, and he knelt next to her, hands fisted. She touched his knee and smiled when he jolted. "That's how I felt when you touched me earlier. I wonder if I could possible be as beautiful to you as you are to me," she said in a wondering tone as she searched his face, reached up and ran her tiny thumbs over his cheekbones. He didn't blink, didn't move, as she turned around and presented her back to him. When she had unzipped her dress, she turned back and he was--

On the other side of the room, again. She sighed, but this time he looked back at her and his beautiful scarlet eyes were bold bright against his pale skin. He stripped off his wet shirt, then reached into his suitcase and removed a dry one. "Here," he held out his hand and she went to him without hesitation, stepping out of her new dress and leaving it on the dusty floor. 

Like a prince, like her prince, he laid her down on the towel he had spread out for her earlier. He laid next to her, still coiled tight, and used his dry shirt to wipe her face, her body, stroking the soft cotton fabric over her gently, paying close attention to every small and smaller piece of her - the soft downy skin behind her earlobes, the hollows of her collarbones, her elbows, her short, skinny thighs. She was wearing a thin white camisole and matching underwear, black silk stockings hooked to white garters. He traced the strap of her camisole with one hand, unsnapped one of her stockings with the other. 

She didn't have much fancy lingerie to pick from, but she had selected these pieces especially for him. She had seen him taking it off her, his fingers gentle as he rolled her stockings down her legs. She couldn't quite have imagined how it would feel, his strength so obvious in each outline of every muscle but so tempered when he touched her. 

Jasper was always the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, every time she looked at him. His dark eyelashes clotted with raindrops, his hair shining and sleek, his body, so much bigger than she had imagined, even in her mind-- 

"Is it too much?" he asked, feeling the flash of apprehension that fluttered through her mind. He picked up her feet, one at a time, and ran his fingers over her arches as he pulled her stockings off. 

She shook her head, a little desperately. All this stopping and starting was enough to drive a girl crazy. Almost three decades and one day of foreplay and if he stopped touching her, she was going to scream loud enough to drown out the rain. It sounded like it was hailing now, but she wouldn't stop for anything short of the apocalypse. "No," she told him, trying to verbalize how everything she had seen couldn't compare to _feeling_ it all happen to her. "It's only that you're so much _more_ than I imagined. You're so big, and your hands, when you touch me--" She broke off and held out her hand. Understanding, he slid his fingers through hers. He lowered his face to kiss the back of her palm, her fingertips. 

"Don't ever let me hurt you," he warned in a desperate voice, and waited for her to nod. When she did, his wicked smile and hot eyes made her whole body tighten. "I would like to go slow, Alice. So I can pay you proper homage, like you deserve."

And he kissed her, so slow and thorough it was a beautiful torture. _Is it possible to be worshipped to death?_ she thought in the part of her mind that wasn't exulting over the feel and taste of his mouth. Even in his happiness, there was a part of him that was methodical, trying to learn everything she likes best, to please her. Hard to do when she didn't know herself - Alice had no memory of any other mouth or taste but his, and she never will. 

She sighed something like that against his hair as he nibbled down her neck and he bit down harder. "Jasper," she scratched her nails harder against his back. "Could you -- I need-- something--"

He leaned over her, placed his thumbs on either side of her hips, inside her plain cotton panties. She fell silent, stopped breathing, stared up at him with starving eyes, a gasp lingering on her lips, damp from his mouth. "I've decided you must be crazy to feel this way about me." He stroked his fingers just there, over her center, and she let out a high-pitched squeak, clenching her thighs together. She could feel her wetness soaking through the cotton and she knew he could feel it too. His gaze seemed fixed there, in fact, and in her visions she had seen him do something she could scarcely imagine, but maybe... 

He looked back into her eyes as he slipped her underwear down her legs, drew them away. "And I've decided I don't care, because you're going to drive me crazy too." Then he pressed his hand over her again, reached his other hand up to tear her camisole down the middle, and he was touching her everywhere at once. 

To Jasper it was a claiming, reaching out to grab an elusive paradise he never thought would come, one he believed had to be an oasis until he felt her skin under his. For Alice, who had already given herself over to him, fully and without reservations, before he ever saw her face, it was a homecoming. The light wrapping around that parched traveler on the road to Damascus. The piece of music she'd had stuck in her head for years finally crescendoing inside her body.

She moaned desperate, hungry things into the air burning around them, staticky with the electricity from the storm, and everything she said seemed to inflame him, make him hungrier and more determined to please her. When he scraped those strong perfect teeth over her breasts, she shrieked and writhed, so he slid one long thick finger inside her, where she was wettest and hungriest and most eager to feel him. " _Yes_ \- waited and waited," she tried to tell him and he moved his head against her chest like he was nodding. He licked down her sternum, over her flat stomach. 

Alice fisted her hands against her eyes to keep herself from flying out of her body. She doesn't want to be anywhere else right now. To hell with the future when she has _this_ and _here_ and _now_. Her back arched and his mouth is on her thighs now, exactly like she dreamed, but more and better. She tasted his name screamed from her lips, his venom in her mouth from those long, hungry kisses, so much fresher and sweeter than they had been in any vision. "Holy waters," she felt him say against her skin, and then his mouth, his tongue and his fingers were burning through her.

She felt like he struck a match against her soul, it's blazing red and orange and yellow and bright bright blue, _their color_ , at the center, and when the fire becomes an inferno, she screamed and something that sounded like thunder roared. She realized an instant later that it was him, that he could feel her pleasure as keenly as she did. The lightning flashed again and again, against her closed eyes and outside the window, and he held her tight and fed on her as he forced the flames to grow higher and higher...

When she finally opened her eyes, he was lying next to her, her hand pressed to his lips, lips that were still wet with her venom.

She is wrung out and deboned limp, so blissful she can't help laughing. "Jasper," she managed to get out. "Is that normal or-- did-- I had-- What you did, Jasper, oh, that was _wonderful_."

He was laughing as long and loud as her while he leaned over to kiss her face. "It was perfect. Because you are-- I've seen everything and there's no part of you that isn't perfect." His eyes were so tender she swore she could feel her heart swelling in her throat. There's a feeling in his hands she can only call reverential. He laid one palm over the curve of her naked chest, painted with impressions of his lips, teeth, tongue. 

"I can't let you go, Alice," he told her again, and he was still afraid, even now, of what that meant. "I won't be able to stop loving you now." He was as helpless as an infant lying against her - for all he had hoped to give her, she had taken the one thing he had guarded closest, without even knowing it. Losing _your heart is the truth of it. One day you'll look in someone's eyes and your heart will start to beat in their chest and that's the end of you,_ his mother had told him in 1853.

When his heart stopped, he thought that dream was gone. And now, at 104, he had found it and lost it to this brilliant stranger. Not at all what his mother would have had in mind - but impossibly inevitable, him and Alice.

She cupped his face to fix it in her mind as he turned his head and kissed her wrist. "I love you more than anyone in the world, but Jasper, if you keep doubting me, it's going to start to irritate me," she told him. It was such a surprising response he couldn't help laughing again and she smiled, but her eyes stayed firm. "You don't have to let go. We never have to stop, Jasper." 

"I want to give you something," he said suddenly and her eyes widened with delight. "Not _that_ ," he told her, smiling ruefully. "Not yet. Hold on." He rose to his feet in one sudden, swift movement that took her by surprise. He had already figured out that the best way to surprise her was to decide things and do them instantly, which was not something he had much practice in, but he supposed he would improve in time.

He rummaged half-naked through the kitchen of the farmhouse until he found a single fork hidden on the top shelf of one of the cabinets. He broke one tine off and twisted and twisted the metal until it formed a small ring, the point and root overlapping to make it even smaller because he had already memorized the dimensions of her fingers.

He clasped it tightly in his hand as he laid back down beside her, but her smile said she had seen it all while he was gone. "Do you know what it is?" he teased, leaning over her and kissing that handcrafted-by-God mouth, once, twice, three times. Her raven hair stood in spikes around her glowing face and her toes were drawing small hearts on the dusty floor.

"Yes," she laughed, and when he held it up to her, she didn't even glance at it, simply stared into his eyes. "It's your heart. You're giving me your heart."

He could only nod, his breath gone.

She pushed him over and crawled on top of him. "You're so much bigger than me," she said, distracted for a moment by his bones and his skin, everything so divinely familiar and yet miraculously new under her hands. "Next time I'm going to have my hands all over you. That is," she dragged herself back to her point even as he shuddered, head to toe, "I gave you mine a long time ago, the first time I saw you, the light falling from the sky and lingering against your hair. When I decided I had to wait for you. Here," she held out her hand, and he slipped it on her finger. "I'm going to keep it safe for you," she told him solemnly and he smiled again, young and beautiful, his golden hair drying into curls around his lean face. 

He looked 20 years old again, she thought with a start. The weight and weariness in his eyes had faded like the crimson would one day and it made her so glad she leaned forward and kissed his smile. "We're going to be so happy, Jasper. This is your best smile yet," she whispered to his mouth.

"I've smiled more in two days with you than I have in the past fifty. Another thing I owe you for, ma'am." He couldn't stop staring at his ring on her finger. Seeing it there made him so indescribably proud, in this second life where he was proud of very little. "It'll take me forever to pay you back, I suspect." He found his clean shirt on the floor and pulled it over her thin frame so it would smell like her when he pulled it back on.

The storm had passed and darkness slipped into the room to surround them. In the blackness, no moon overhead, he realized what had begun in this dusty room would be the foundation for the rest of his existence. 

She kissed a line from the scar on his heart, over his clavicle, the line of his throat, his chin, finally, his mouth. "Forever is all we have. An hour past eternity, I'll see you there, baby."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when you read something so many times a word loses all meaning to you and just looks like a bunch of squiggles? That's where I am with this chapter.... So I hope it's not a bunch of meaningless squiggles. Please comment if you enjoyed or if you think I should get a life and stop reading vampire smut. (Ha! Not a chance!)
> 
> Chapter title is from the amazing song "Because the Night." (Songwriters: Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith)


	5. Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole

You think you know what will happen if you ever die. 

You know what you deserve, where you will surely go if the words that you were raised on turn out to be true. You imagine all the terrors you have visited on other people, the torture, pain, betrayal, being done to you. Your blood pooling in your mouth, your soul stretched across the rack.

Your dreams are so far away you have forgotten how to miss them. All you meet are strangers. You have unbelievable powers, more gifts than anyone can imagine, but there is no magic left in the world for you, a mortal man turned to monster and set free to wander, to watch the world extinguish itself. You were lost long ago.

Then one rainy day you walk into a diner and she obliterates everything that your life has been. Like an atom bomb going through your flesh, changing you at the cellular level.

For the second time in your existence, you are reborn: blinking bleary-eyed and new in the waves of brightness coming off of her.

Every day after her is about learning to live inside that light. Your heart starts to sprout, to unfurl from the cold darkness it's been mired in and reach out for her.

You curve your existence around hers like you spoon her in bed, like your hands cradle her pale blossom of a face every day.

You promise yourself you will spend whatever time you are given trying to be the man she thinks you are. You will never hurt her. Every day you will try to make her smile. 

This feebleness is all you can offer her and it is a handful of dust compared to what she has brought to you.

After a week together, she winds her hands through your hair and pulls you close, whispers that she's tired of waiting. You haven't made love to her yet. You had only been with three women before her - two prostitutes when you were a soldier and then Maria. 

This woman is so different, in every aspect. It takes all your control to kiss her, to touch her soft skin and try to give her pleasure with your quivering hands. What more can you ask from eternity but that? 

And then she shows you again how endless her reservoirs of magic are. 

For the rest of your existence, you can only remember that first time in flashes, sunbursts of sensation. 

The warmth of her, that small body burning on top of you. So much awe and hunger vibrating inside her head.

Your body is a horror show, scars on top of scars in places, so ugly it hurts you to exist inside it, and she can't get enough of it. Of you. 

She tells you over and over, in words and emotions, how beautiful you are to her. How she's found you, and you'll never be alone again. 

She says it and you can feel how bone-deep she means it, like she's wanted to say it for a long time. 

Every touch of her hands feel like forever. 

_How many times will you save me?_ you want to ask her. _Did you know you are keeping heaven inside you, in that warm mouth, in the throb of your flesh on my fingers?_

But all your praise and your dreams come out as her name. That simple, ordinary name: your first and last benediction. 

She grasps your hips between her thighs and starts to work you inside her, inch by inch, and it seems impossible at first because she's so tiny and then-- 

that euphoric roar in your head, a rush of white heat arching through you. More than an atomic blast - a supernova.

Her whole face consumed by so much pleasure it's like staring directly into the sun. 

Her sweet voice laughing - "I knew it. A perfect fit." The joy of breathing her hot breath, watching her as she learns how to move against you.

Your bodies both turn to action verbs, moving so fast and you can never come close enough to her, desperate to exist in the same space at the same time; the joy too great for either of you to bear alone. 

Most of all you remember the most beautiful woman in the world, grinding her pleasure out of your body, saying your name and _please_ , begging like you can't find the words to do. Like she has forgotten you gave her your heart, mind, and body on a platter for her picking. 

Your moans of release shudder hot into the half-moon scar of her making, there at the base of her soft, immortal neck. 

Both of your bodies wring themselves out, collapse limp. You're still as the time before time until she finds the strength to brush her hand against your side.

The simple miracle of that envelops you.

This is how it's supposed to be, you realize, a beautiful dawning of knowledge. Suddenly the world starts to make sense again. And you, you almost missed it. If she hadn't been determined to wait for you, you would have gone through your life never knowing. Walked through eternity staring at the ground, missing the brilliance of the sun and clouds and stars above you. Wondered what the fuck other people were so damn happy about, when now you can't wrestle the grin off your face. 

When you finally raise your head, you see the bed has collapsed, broken in two, and the headboard crashed into the lamp. You lie atop a splintered, flickering, shattered pile. You think, I can relate. 

You kiss her cooling forehead, pick up her hand and link your fingers with hers and kiss her and kiss her until you almost forget there was ever a beforetime when you didn't have her mouth memorized. 

"Thank you," you whisper between kisses. Even softer: "I love you." These two phrases returned to you so you can wind them like golden chains against her skin, binding her to you, and even more, you to her. 

She looks like she's caught between laughing and crying and she kisses your eyelids closed with the same words. 

You think you know what will happen if you ever die. 

She delivers you to a heaven on earth.

You think you are a demon, a monster, a nightmare. 

She calls you her best dreams come true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Head Over Feet" (songwriters: Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard). I promise I'm working on some less-smutty parts but I wanted to post this little scene tonight. This fandom has been so welcoming to me and I'm really, really thankful.


	6. From the ranks of the freaks

1949

Sometimes, coming out of a vision, Alice would turn in a circle, re-orienting herself to the world she was in, rather than the world inside her mind. Jasper had accepted her visions wholeheartedly, like she knew he would, and he took everything she told him in stride. With his steady presence at her side, she found the visions coming more frequently. It was easier to let herself go when she knew someone was waiting, shining the light to lead her back. 

They were in upstate Michigan when she stopped in a clearing in the woods and went black-eyed, stared vacantly at the trees. He moved nearer, keeping his eyes on her while he scented the perimeter for any possible threats. They had forwarded their luggage to the train station in Detroit and she had been eagerly discussing the shopping trips she planned to take to the different department stores when her voice had cut off. 

When she emerged, she circled the clearing, then turned to him and smiled. "Peter has silvery hair, doesn't he?"

"Peter? Well, it's light colored. I suppose you could say silver." 

"We'll see him and Charlotte in Detroit." Alice clapped her hands together, beaming. "Wonderful! I get to meet your friends! Does Charlotte like to shop?"

"For books, maybe. I don't think she shares your passion for clothes." 

Alice sighed. "I wonder if she'd let me give her a makeover." She reached for Jasper's hand and he spun her in a circle. She laughed and ran their joined hands over his chest. He was wearing clothes she'd picked out for him, of course, and Alice thought that his military bearing suited the casual sweater and trousers beautifully. 

"You want a new dolly to play with?" Jasper teased her. "Bored with me already?"

"Never ever. Come on," she tugged his hand. "It's going to be sunny tomorrow, so we should go out with them tonight."

Once they got into the city, Alice hesitated, frowning at the crowds passing by. "Jasper, why don't you go by the train station and get the bags, and I'll go ahead and wait for Peter and Charlotte?" He hesitated and she slipped her hand into his. "Please? They're heading for a park a few miles west. I'll find them and introduce myself and we'll wait there for you."

She never sent him away unless it was for his own good, to prevent him from something she had seen - usually if she saw he was going to feed on a human. Her eyes were imploring, her hand gentle and sure inside his. "All right." He brushed his free hand over her cheek and she turned her face into his touch. "Go ahead. I will follow you."

He watched her slip away through the crowds before he turned to walk to the train. They had been apart a handful of times since they met, and every time he felt a little off-balance, like a part of him had gone with her. 

His journey to the train station was uneventful and he headed off to the park, carrying her trunk of clothes and their bags as he always did. It was the emotions that did him in. He approached an old woman with ragged clothes and eyes that radiated anxiety. _I shouldn't have let her go ahead alone,_ the thought popped unbidden into his mind. _Something could happen, anything could happen. She was so small - no, this is ridiculous._ He held his breath as he passed the woman by. _She'll be fine,_ he told himself. But his speed slowly increased until he was running. 

He could track her in the night, blindfolded, for a hundred miles or more. When her smell grew stronger, he was in a shabby area near the port. It was likely safe enough during the day, but at night it was all bars, brothels, and betting parlors. It was after 1 am, the icy wind roaring off the lake, and he cut through crowds of people, mostly men, laughing and cursing and vomiting in the street. Lust and anger and desperation and laughter ricocheted around his brain and he craved Alice like they craved sex or drink. Just the sight of her - 

And then she was there, silhouetted perfectly under a street lamp in the park, the lake frozen white behind her. Three men surrounded her and Jasper could tell by their bearing that they were fighters. The four of them were a half-mile away from him, but he heard the man's voice like he was right beside him. "You all alone out here, little girl?"

She looked like the easiest of pickings, of course, all four foot ten of her, wide golden eyes, the lace hem of her skirt peeking out from under her deep blue peacoat. 

One of them, the biggest and the drunkest, wrapped his beefy arm around Alice's tiny shoulders, hugging her close. "Poor thing, she's frozen solid," he laughed to his friends. "Let me warm you up, sweetheart."

Alice turned her head, eyes already rolling in annoyance, and caught sight of Jasper. She started shaking her head, her mouth forming the word "No" but he was already moving with his inhuman speed. The men whirled around as he hurtled toward them, looking like an avenging angel, his skin glowing as white as the ice on the lake, his hair flowing behind him as he ran. 

"Jasper, don't--" Alice easily broke the large man's hold on her and jabbed the chest of one of the other men. It wasn't even a real punch, but the man flew twenty feet back before he finally skidded to a stop in the street. The remaining two men glanced back and forth, suddenly wary as their animal instincts stirred awake and began screaming at them to run. 

It happened in seconds. Jasper fell on the large man, knocking him out of the circle of light from the streetlamp, and fixed his teeth on his razor-burned neck. His friend opened his mouth to scream in panic. Before the sound could emerge, Jasper broke his neck and dropped him on the ground. The two men were enough to ease the worst of his hunger. He was only vaguely aware of Alice rushing to carry the first into a stand of trees nearby. She lifted his huge frame over her head as easily as a handful of dust. 

The man she had knocked into the street was badly bruised, but he would live. Half of the skin on his back was scraped off and the scent of his blood drew Jasper's spine up straight. He rose and looked down at the wasted body at his feet. 

Half of him wanted to run to the injured friend and drain him dry. The other half felt disgust so intense he pressed his fists to his forehead. The scents of the men, their alcohol and sweat and aftershave, their rapidly cooling flesh, filled his head and he bit down hard on his lip so he wouldn't scream. His teeth nearly broke through his flesh but he couldn't feel this small pain after so many years in the Wars. 

Their deaths had been quick but the terror they felt as he killed them was still piercing his mind like a razor, flooding him with shame even as their blood hummed through his veins and arteries. 

"Jasper? We have to go before the other one wakes up." She took the other body away and returned to him in a flash, carrying their bags and her trunk. "Here," she threw his arm over her shoulders, the way the other man's had been. She shoved their suitcases under his other arm, and pulled him forward until he had to walk or fall on his face. 

After a few moments, her scent pushed its way through his brain and he took a deep breath, the simple fact of _Alice_ soaking through him like sunlight. "I'm sorry," he muttered, staring at his feet. 

"I thought you would be longer at the train station. I should have come up with another plan," she said softly. 

"No, Alice. Never say that. It's my fault." He moved his hand off her shoulder and took the trunk from her. He wouldn't look at her. 

"It's done now, Jasper. Let it be done."

"Here they are," he said, smelling Peter and Charlotte before he saw them. A moment later, he turned his head and watched them approaching. Jasper and Alice had walked quickly enough to put a good distance between them and the bodies, and they were approaching the edge of the park now. 

They looked unearthly in the darkness - Charlotte nearly as small as Alice and strawberry blonde, Peter half a head taller and so fair-haired it was almost white. Silvery, Alice had said. Peter greeted him with the same quiet smile that Jasper had known for decades and he nodded in response. 

"Hello, Jasper," Peter said. "I thought we smelled you nearby." 

Jasper knew they were studying Alice at his side. While his eyes were a brilliant, glowing red from the fresh blood flowing through him, Alice's were the warm gold of autumn leaves. He still found it difficult to reconcile seeing those eyes on a vampire, so he knew Charlotte and Peter were taken aback. 

"Peter, Charlotte, it's good to see you again. This is my companion, Alice." 

Alice smiled at them, fighting her innate desire to run forward and greet them. It was always strange for her to meet people she had already met in her visions. Her instinct was to embrace them, but she stuck close to Jasper and managed to resist. She also knew he hated her to see the scarlet of his eyes after he fed, but he turned and looked at her without flinching. "Alice, I've told you about Peter and Charlotte."

"Yes, it's so wonderful to meet you. I've been dying to meet friends of Jasper's." She glanced over Charlotte's plain black coat, then brightened. "I love those boots, Charlotte. They're divine." She beamed at Charlotte's burgundy calf-high boots and Charlotte glanced at her in surprise. 

"Oh, thank you, Alice. I scavenged them in New York a few months ago." 

Scavenged, of course, meant picked up off a victim after killing them, but Alice brushed that aside before Jasper's mood could darken further. "Would you like to go shopping with me? We've been traveling through the country for a time and I'm desperate to go to a proper department store and really do myself up right."

Charlotte, still nonplussed, looked up at Peter again. "I suppose we could." She glanced back to Jasper, the sadness in his eyes and the strain around his mouth. He didn't seem different to her from the man she had known in the South, and she was surprised to see him with someone as cheerful and flighty as this Alice.

"We can get the last room at the Majestic if we hurry. It's on your floor and then we can talk all night," Alice said, making reference to the hotel where Peter and Charlotte were staying. 

The two of them exchanged a glance, then looked back to Alice and Jasper. "All right," Peter said. He was easy-going and he trusted Jasper implicitly. "It seems we have a lot to talk about."

In the hotel, Peter and Charlotte invited them over to their room. Nomadic vampires traveled lightly, discarding their possessions when they found something better. The more time passed, the less material goods meant to most of them. Peter and Charlotte fit exactly in that mold. Their clothes were well-made and practical; they had stacks of books with them, but once they finished reading one, they simply left it behind - at the hotel, on a park bench or in a mail box. 

This way of living was foreign to Alice. She had always loved accumulating things, carting them around with her like a caterpillar weaving its own cocoon. She looked around their room, as she had done the first time she was with Jasper, cataloging their meager belongings. One of the things she looked forward to most with the Cullens was all the _things_ they had. House after house, room upon room, full of books and art and furniture and automobiles. Not nearly enough clothes, but she would take care of that in good time.

"Charlotte, I truly hope you'll allow me to take you shopping while we're here. I could pick out the most cunning little cocktail dress for you and you and Peter could go out dancing!" She whirled around, looking ready for a dance herself in her white dress, edged in delicate lace, and Charlotte's lips quirked in spite of herself. 

"We're not much for dancing, but yes, I suppose we could. I don't normally buy things like that for myself."

"It doesn't seem like many of our kind do." Alice wrinkled her nose and curled next to Jasper on the long, low sofa in the hotel room. He had been silent for much of the walk back, but he reached out and laid his hand on her lap as soon as she sat beside him, simply craving the connection of touch. "Of course, I haven't spent extended time with many, other than Jasper, but why would you not cultivate a personal style if you had an unlimited amount of time, money, and energy? Truly, think about it, it's--"

"Alice," Peter broke in. He kept looking from her to Jasper, clearly curious about their relationship though he was too polite to ask anything outright. "I'm sorry, but I can't help but notice your eyes. Could I ask - how did they come to look that way?"

"Yes," Charlotte spoke up. "I've thought for many years about the possibility of a vampire-human hybrid. Is that what you are?"

Alice laughed. "No, certainly not. I-- well, we're trying to adopt a new lifestyle." She nudged Jasper and he looked down at her and smiled, just slightly. 

"We try to live off animals now. Large game mostly, bears and wolves, panthers, moose, deer," Jasper explained.

"They call it being a vegetarian. The one who invented it," Alice added.

"And who is that? Would we know him?" Charlotte asked, her narrow mouth pursed as she considered this novel idea.

"Oh, I don't think so, but his name's Carlisle Cullen. Even we don't know him yet. Not exactly."

Peter and Charlotte looked completely baffled now, and Jasper smiled more fully. "Alice is clairvoyant." He looked at her with a softness to his expression that his friends had never seen before. "It's a gift, like mine, but much more useful. She has visions of the future." 

"It's how I knew we were going to meet you in the park," Alice added, and explained the subjective nature of her visions, how she used them to find Jasper, and their hopes to find the Cullens and join their coven.

Charlotte nodded slowly. She had pulled a battered journal out and was taking quick notes in her own invented shorthand. "Are these premonitions something you experienced as a human, as well? I find the extrasensory abilities of our kind most fascinating. It seems that many of them are merely heightened versions of gifts that existed in their human form, like Jasper's empathic sense." 

Alice hesitated briefly. "I don't remember any of it. Being a human." Jasper brushed his hand down her arm and drew her closer to his side. "I've never remembered anything from before. But," she said, brightening again, "I do get the sense, somehow, that I always had visions in some fashion. Not sure how I know that, but I think I did."

"Alice is quite extraordinary," Jasper said, pride ringing clear in his voice. "I'm happy we've met so you can get to know each other."

"How are you faring with this new lifestyle, Jasper?" Peter asked. The sadness he had seen on Jasper's face when they met had faded, though they could tell that he had fed quite recently on humans. 

"Not terribly successful today," Jasper said ruefully, a shadow passing over his face for a moment. "But Alice makes it easier. Feeding on animals - it is not that pleasant. But the alternative was not as easy for me as it is for most of us."

Peter knew better than almost anyone how much Jasper had struggled with the burden of his empathic ability when he had to feed. "Yes, I remember that. Perhaps it was meant to be then." He smiled at Alice and she grinned in response. Such a sweet, funny woman. Not at all who he would have pictured Jasper with, but there was that old saying about opposites attracting. 

He exchanged a glance with Charlotte and saw her eyes had darkened in the hours they had spent in the hotel room. They had been on their way to hunt when they had run into Jasper and Alice and now they would need to feed quickly in the short time left before dawn broke. 

Of course, Peter learned quickly he didn't have to explain any of this when Alice was around. "We should go to our room and unpack," Alice said as she and Jasper rose. "Be careful, it will be sunny today, so you'll need to be back by seven. Your best chance is an alleyway two blocks away."

"Thank you," Charlotte said, taken aback but pleased. 

"Of course." Alice flung her arms around them both, unable to restrain herself for another minute. "I'm so happy to meet you both. You've been such true friends to him." She cupped Peter's face briefly in her hands. "Thank you." 

Peter understood that she was referring to Maria, how she had used Jasper's abilities and made him perform acts that still haunted him, how Peter had risked his own life to help Jasper find freedom. "It was my pleasure," he said softly, glancing at Jasper, who looked nonplussed at their exchange. 

"Can you manage all those?" Charlotte asked out of habit, watching Jasper load up with all their suitcases and Alice's trunk as they prepared to leave Peter and Charlotte's room and go to their own.

Jasper smiled. "I'm fine. It's nice to be useful for something. When you return, please come and see us and tell us of your travels."

"Of course," Peter replied, and he and Charlotte put their coats back on and left.

Jasper hadn't seen Alice's frown when he made his last comment, but when he closed the door to their room, she faced him with her hands on her hips. "You are useful for much more than a porter, Jasper Whitlock." 

Jasper settled their bags in the corner of the room, propping her trunk open so her clothes could air out, the way he knew she liked. "Hmm? Oh. That was a joke, Alice."

"You do know that, don't you?" she persisted, closing the drapes on the window tightly and then moving to wrap her arms around his waist. 

He let himself rest his cheek against her head for the pure pleasure of it, the scent of her hair, the feel of _Alice_ resonating through him like a string plucked at the perfect pitch and tone. "Yes. I'm also good for carrying things on shopping trips or lifting you over especially large mud puddles--"

"Jasper," Alice hissed, lifting her head. She had an unusually sour expression on her face and she leaned into his chest, her teeth sinking gently through his sweater and into one of his scars in a warning bite. 

"Alice," Jasper growled back, bending his head and trying to swallow his grin as he bit her curved earlobe, soft as a petal. He licked it as she shivered.

She went for his lips next, still annoyed enough to bite harder than was strictly playful, but Jasper knew they would continue this way until they were sprawled naked on the bed or the floor, both of their bodies vibrating with joy and stinging from hundreds of tiny bites. Venom would cool on their skin to a thin silver sheen and they would have to scrub each other's back and legs in the shower to wash it away.

Much later that afternoon, the porter knocked on the door of room 312 and asked if they had a dinner order. The young woman replied "No," with a laugh in her voice and he smiled to himself, thinking they must be on their honeymoon.

"The afternoon paper's outside for you," he called as he dropped the folded paper by their door. "Let us know if you need anything else."

A few minutes later, a thin, pale arm darted into the hallway and grabbed the paper up, too quick for anyone to see. She was wearing her new gun-metal gray stockings and bright yellow garter belt ("a delightful mix of playful and practical," she intoned as she modeled it for him, Jasper's mouth already watering) and nothing else.

Jasper was sprawled face-down on the bed and didn't even twitch when Alice climbed on top of him. She tossed the paper above his head and stretched out on his back, content to laze away the day until they went out with Peter and Charlotte that night. Her back against his, she could feel the length of his spine compared to the slightness of hers, the way their skin cooled as they melted into each other.

Jasper flipped through the paper, scanning articles quickly. He had a keen interest in business, politics, and history, eager to learn all the things about the human world that he had missed in the years he'd spent with Maria. 

She had a quick flash of something and sat up, turning around to kiss the back of his head. "Jasper, darling, let's get dressed and go down to Peter and Charlotte's room now and visit with them for a bit. We can plan what we'll do tonight - maybe we can go to the cinema. I think there's a new romance out and probably a new war movie too," she chattered away, but she knew the moment he encountered what she had seen in her vision. He went still.

It was an article on the two men who had been found dead early this morning by the waterfront. Their identities had not been officially confirmed as their families were still being notified, but sources said one was a butcher and the other a salesman. The butcher was married and had three children. The salesman had won a medal in the war. 

"He was stationed in the Pacific theater and was awarded a Bronze Star for his acts of heroism," Jasper read aloud. He folded his arms over the paper and laid his head on top of them. 

Alice kissed his shoulder blades, pressed her head between them. "We can leave their families some money," Alice whispered into his skin. "We still have all of what we won on the World Series--"

"What you won." Jasper tensed his back and Alice slipped off, kneeling at his side. He rose and went to dress, his shoulders slumped as he shrugged into the same shirt he had worn the day before. "I'm not using your money for this."

"There is no mine and yours anymore. I told you that."

"Alice, _I_ killed them. Not you."

"Because you felt you had to protect me," she replied stubbornly, crossing her arms as she watched him pull his pants on. "If not for that, you would have restrained yourself. I've seen you do it." Jasper pulled his shoes out from under the bed, began slowly brushing the dust and dirt off. "Look at me, Jasper."

He shook his head, but she scooted closer to him. "That's what all this woe-is-me has been about. It was a mistake, baby. It was an accident and you're sorry--"

"I'm a burden on you," Jasper exploded, whirling to face her. His eyes were so fiery it would have hurt a human to look at them. "I'm a drag on your life, Alice." He didn't resist when she embraced him, pressing against his body, but he didn't touch her either. "I'm always sorry," he whispered into her ear. "I'm sorry you couldn't love someone better than me--"

He felt her quiver and realized Alice was crying, soundlessly. That broke him, as it always did. He wrapped his arms around her then, brushed his lips over her hair over and over, the lightest and softest kisses he could muster. 

"There _is_ no one better for me than you," she choked out in response. "And you're not leaving me," she looked at his face, her own filled with urgency and panic. "I would find you wherever you went. I would hunt you until you gave in--"

He cupped her head, his hand so huge compared to her that he could touch the top of her skull with his finger and her chin with his thumb. "I won't leave," he murmured, looking deep into her eyes. He found some comfort inside him and sent it out to her and she sagged into his embrace, her body relaxing until her limbs went slack in his arms. That was her darkest, deepest fear, what rested at the bottom of everything - she never wanted to be alone again. He hated that he had made her afraid of it now. "I won't leave you, Alice, as long as you want me here."

"Then, you'll stay forever," she replied, that stubborn tilt to her chin returning.

"Think about what the Cullens will think when you show up with me. When they see how little control I have over myself." She was staring at him with wounded eyes but he made himself force the words out. "They'll love you Alice. It's impossible not to. But me-- think what a future will be like with me--"

Alice laughed at that - there was more than a little sadness in it, but it was still a real laugh, and even Jasper had to smile a bit when he realized what he had said.

"I think of little else, Jasper. I know exactly what it will be. And it's flawed, yes, but it's beautiful." She ran her hands over her head, pushing her hair from one side to the other until it tangled into messy spikes. "It will take time, but they will accept you. I promise." She pulled his arm more fully around her and he smiled in spite of all his worries, and kissed her between her beautiful eyes. "This, being _us_ , it's the best part of my life. Not being alone anymore," she whispered. "Never devalue how much you've given to me, Jasper. " 

He pressed his face to her cheek and took a deep breath - all his brave, magical Alice, hope and forgiveness and more love than he could ever deserve. "I swear sometimes I think you've come from some other world. I would say I dreamed you into being, but my mind isn't half clever enough to create someone like you."

He pulled back and he and Alice stared at each other for a long moment, a smile flitting around her mouth. She kept all his beautiful words in the deepest chamber of her heart; they papered the walls and cushioned the floor, fragrant as springtime and strong as time. 

"We'll leave them the World Series money," Jasper said finally. "I suppose that's the best we can do for them now."

"I wouldn't know what the World Series was if you hadn't told me, you know. I never pay attention to things like that."

"Even you can't see everything," he said, something he told her often. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "One day I'm going to be the man you deserve, Alice."

She rose on her knees and embraced him, folding herself tighter into his lap. "You _are_ him already. I don't see everything, but I see every bit of you, Jasper. I always have."

Two days later, it rained. Alice and Charlotte shopped all day, Alice weaving through rack after rack of clothes while Charlotte trod in her wake. Time to make all her ideas a reality, she thought happily, piling clothes in her arms for Charlotte to try on. Charlotte was uneasy around so many humans and gave off an unmistakable "leave me alone" aura that emptied out the department. They would have to buy a whole lot of things to make up for all the commissions the shop girls were losing from the departing customers, but Alice considered herself up to the challenge. 

"How do you feel about pink?" Alice held out a satin dress with an A-line skirt. "Or, ooh, mint green!" She literally squealed with delight and Charlotte tried not to look like she was being tortured. Alice sighed inwardly. She didn't see Rosalie Hale very often (usually her visions centered on Carlisle or Edward), but she knew her well enough to know she appreciated a good outfit. Hopefully that would be enough to help them get along. 

"Alice," Charlotte spoke up a few moments later in their dressing room. She had her face buried in taffeta and had to wait until Alice yanked the skirt down and the bodice into place. "I just wanted to tell you how much we've enjoyed meeting you. Peter and I will move on tomorrow--"

"Yes, I saw. Cincinnati?" 

"Yes. You're welcome to come--"

"Oh, thank you, but we can't. We're going to travel on our own until we find the Cullens. We'll probably go north for a few days to hunt, and by then I'll have another vision and we'll know where to look next. Isn't this dress gorgeous? Oh, Charlotte, you're so pretty!" She eyed the messy bun Charlotte's hair was tugged into. "Could I take your hair down? Do you mind?"

"No, it's fine. Here," she let it down herself and it fell in messy waves to her shoulders. Alice pushed it forward with a wistful look in her eyes and Charlotte smiled again, watching her face behind her in the mirror. "I've never seen Jasper as happy as he is with you, Alice."

"Truly? You think so?"

Charlotte nodded, slipping out of the dress so she could put on the one Alice was holding out for her to try next. "Yes. Emphatically yes. He's always been... well, moody. It's not his fault," she hastened to add. "His empathic ability is a curse sometimes. If he didn't have such a good soul, it wouldn't bother him as much, but it always has. Peter told me he used to go off by himself for days after Maria made him cull the newborns. No one ever knew where he went or what he did."  
She pulled on the famed mint green dress and missed the brief flash of sadness that passed over Alice's face, thinking of all the years he had been without her, alone and suffering. Alice wished for the hundredth time that she and Jasper had been born at the same time. 

"But the other night at the movies, he was so different. Alice, he was like a whole different person." Charlotte met Alice's eyes again and shook her head in wonder.

Alice smiled to herself, adjusting the straps on Charlotte's dress and thinking back to the movies. They had seen a drama about corrupt Southern politicians instead of the romance. It was based off of some book Peter and Charlotte had read, so they were in heaven. Alice just loved the movies in general, though she preferred period films with lavish costume budgets or noir movies with all those beautiful faces in shadowy close-ups. 

Jasper was especially content to sit silently in the dark when they went to a late show. The theater was mostly empty and Peter, Charlotte, and Alice's familiar emotions around him helped him filter out everyone else and concentrate on the movie. It wasn't a particularly happy ending so he projected some peaceful emotions to settle everyone as the credits rolled. The warmth Jasper felt from seeing his old friends combined with his love for Alice made the air in the theater sweet and heady. Charlotte remembered feeling almost giddy walking home, the four of them laughing as they strolled along beneath the streetlamps. 

"You must have been just what he was waiting for," Charlotte told her, reaching out to clasp Alice's hand. "I'm so happy for you both."

"Oh, Charlotte." Alice embraced her again. "You must leave us an address where we can reach you before you go. We'll let you know when we find the Cullens - you can come and visit us."

Charlotte grinned as Alice let her go. "We would love to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Save Me" by Aimee Mann. "From the ranks of the freaks / Who suspect they could never love anyone."
> 
> I don't think I got the ending exactly right but I hope you enjoyed! I'm working on the chapter where they first meet the Cullens, which is mostly from Edward's point of view. I'm planning to post that and anything about their life with the Cullens as a separate multi-chapter story.


End file.
